


she laughed his joy she cried his grief

by indecisivelyindependent



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: (though I'm not complaining if Wandavision-Darcy has a doctorate), Darcy Lewis-centric, F/M, Mostly Canon Compliant, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Steve will appear eventually..., because being a grownup is traumatic enough but superheroing is worse, not WandaVision compliant, working towards a different kind of happiness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:26:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28394595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indecisivelyindependent/pseuds/indecisivelyindependent
Summary: In which Darcy Lewis leaves the lab, survives the Snap, and rebuilds her world.
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers
Comments: 10
Kudos: 89





	1. The Get Out of Hydra Free Card

**Author's Note:**

> Because just what I need to be doing right now is starting ANOTHER new fic. Oops.

Nothing was impossible for Darcy Lewis. Dropping out of grad school to help corral a tiny, obsessive astrophysicist and her hunky alien-deity bae? Check. Writing a _stellar_ thesis proposal, pre-drop-out _and_ pun-intended, on the correlation between interpersonal relationships on the International Space Station and international conflict resolution? Check. Power-budgeting through a three-year unpaid internship without defaulting on a shit-ton of student loans? Check.

In retrospect, all this professional-grade mental stamina was due to impeccable timing, a brain always two steps ahead of her mouth (or maybe the other way around), and an obscene amount of caffeine.

Then there was the ability to ditch SHEILD with zero repercussions, but this was less Darcy and more the fact that the Triskelion wasn’t built to serve as a helicarrier landing pad. Or a HYDRA hive, for that matter. In the end, or at least in 2014, _unpaid internship_ meant _zero-paper-trail_ which also meant _as-of-yet-unknown-by-evil-Nazi-scum_. “Darce, things are only going to get worse,” Jane had said. “Get back to the States, lay low for a while, send me a Christmas card. And a text every single day, but, really, if you want to see Lynn anytime soon, you need to go now.” They’d argued about it for about a week, because Darcy was not about to leave her best friend alone in London in the middle of a government agency coup d’état, even if Thor’s presence did seem more permanent than usual. Mjölnir was _nothing_ to having your best friend down the hall.

She knew Jane was right, though—Darcy was long-overdue for a visit to her mom’s, and ever since Ian had ditched her for a blonde Scottish lass, optimism levels were not at their highest. So she packed her checked bags, booked a one-way flight from London to Roanoke, and left a massive stash of imported Pop-Tarts in Jane’s flat, hoping to be back by the time Thor had snacked his way down to the disgusting unfrosted blueberry ones hidden under the guest-room bed.

But it turned out that there were some things that even Darcy Lewis couldn’t power through. Not with timing, not with a brilliant brain or smart-ass mouth, not even with a second quad-shot latte.

Sometimes, the world gets so, so much worse—nine fucking years of darker-than-Dark-Elves, harder-than-vibranium worse—before it can ever get better.


	2. She Moved Back Home Before It Was Cool

At first, it was nice. Nice to be back in the valley, tucked up between the mountains, nice to wake up with the sound of the river out one window and the hum of I-81 out the other. Nice to have a pot of coffee warm on the counter, mom already gone to the hospital. Nice to unpack the suitcases and fill the cedar dresser and go on long hikes up into the Alleghenies. Nice to catch up with high school friends still in Roanoke, friends who were married and had babies and nine-to-fives. Nice and safe and absolutely, perfectly normal.

“Have you thought about a job, Darcy?” her mom asked one night over mac ’n’ cheese and chicken sausage. “Or going back to Culver?” _Something you can finish_ , that was the unspoken concern at the edge of her voice. _Some kind of forward momentum._ “You can’t spend all your time on the internet, you know. It can’t be good for you.”

Darcy tapped her fork on the edge of her plate— _ding_ for no resume to speak of, at least not one that made sense to any civilian, _ding_ for coursework but no program, _ding_ for friends but no boyfriend, _ding_ for trying to be sneaky about all that HYDRA VPN-and-incognito-mode googling. She cleared her throat.

“I’m thinking about VT.”

“Really?”

“No need to sound shocked, Mom. I like school.”

“VT, though—”

“There’s an institute there, international policy. I have...” Darcy paused. “I _might_ have an in. A research fellowship to apply for, forms to fill out... I doubt I’ll be accepted, but I thought I’d try.”

“You’d transfer? Down here? You always hated—”

Darcy sighed. “I didn’t hate it, Mom. I just didn’t fit. Everything seemed slow. Too slow for a dumb seventeen year old who thought she needed something faster.” _Super dumb seventeen year old._ “I think I want to stay, at least for now. VT’s thirty minutes up the road. I’m a millennial. What else is there but to move back home and get a master’s degree?” She tried to hide the bitterness, but it seeped in a little anyway. A brittleness she didn't used to hold.

After cleaning up dinner, Darcy pulled up the website for the Global Issues Initiative. She emailed the registrar at Culver, requested transcripts, tried to maneuver her CV into some semblance of understandable language. _Served as ~~an~~ ~~intern~~ ~~aide~~ a research assistant alongside Dr. Jane Foster and Dr. Erik Selvig, focusing on astrophysics ~~and intergalactic alignments~~_. _National and international lab work in New Mexico, Norway, and England…_

* * *

Darcy doesn’t get the fellowship. _While your application was highly admired, we’ve ultimately decided to…_ Blah, blah, blah. Another rejection is just another rejection.

She is, however, admitted into the international affairs program, most of her grad credits transfer and the GII program director is willing to serve as her thesis advisor. With online classes, she doesn’t have to go to campus all that often, except for library runs, so she’s able to pick up a part-time admin job at law office in Roanoke. Between research and work, she’s busy—not London-busy, not lab-busy, but the kind of busy that makes her tired enough to sleep and hungry enough to eat.

“Is this what it’s like?” she asks her mom one morning at breakfast. “Is this the rest of my life?”

Lynn shakes her head. “Maybe not the _rest_ of your life, but it is life. Right now, Darcy. It’s life right now.”

It’s hard to keep up with Jane, because Jane is busy too. A text here and there, not really talking about Thor, who seems to have disappeared again. Not talking about Thor means not talking about a lot of other things, which means not talking as much as they should. It isn’t Jane’s fault, Darcy knows that, but Jane is in _London_ and on the Nobel short-list and Darcy… Darcy has paper cuts on her thumbs and is avoiding emailing her advisor because she hasn’t looked at her thesis in three weeks.

Months go by, then a year. The trees turn over. She'd forgotten how beautiful the mountains are in the fall. She writes and reads and schedules meetings and sends emails and goes to the farmers market on Saturdays. _It's life right now_ , she tells herself. It's life right now.

But one morning, Darcy sees something about Johannesburg on her Twitter feed. Like the rest of the world, she can’t look away.

Soon after, she watches Novi Grad fall into the sea.


	3. You Don't Go into Politics to Fix Things

“My _god,_ Darcy, how can you listen—”

“Mom, now is _not_ the time for commentary. Either sit down and _watch_ the news, or wait until later, when I still won’t know anything more than you.”

Her mother sat down on the opposite end of the couch, pushing aside notebooks and print-outs strewn across the cushions. On the TV, a Czech journalist was interviewing their prime minister about relief efforts, but the conversation kept turning towards upcoming elections and whether or not an election was prudent when the closest neighbor didn’t have a capitol. A day later and politicians were doing _shit_. Typical.

The screen rotated through images of the gaping crater torn into the valley, the bombed-out city hovering in the air. Shaky cell phone footage flashed faces that Darcy recognized—Captain America in his torn, dust-coated uniform. The bright flash of Iron Man’s repulsors. She didn’t see Thor, but she knew his lightning.

Darcy felt her mom’s hand on her ankle, and tore her gaze away from the screen.

“Did you hear from Jane?”

“I caught her this morning, for about five seconds. Pretty good for Jane and international communication. Not good for… everything else.”

“You girls and the kinds of men you go for. Tell Jane if she needs a place, we’re here. And this?” Her mom gestured to the papers and post-its and half-full mugs of coffee. “Is this for Dr. Owens?”

Darcy sighed and pulled at the corner of a page. “No, Mom. This disaster of a policy plan is for me.”

“Please tell me you called off work.”

“They offered it before I could ask. Told me to take my vacation time and either finish my thesis or get some rest.”

“Neither of which you’re going to do.”

“Mom. Look, actually _look_ at the world we live in.” Darcy could feel the pressure building behind her eyes as she pointed at the television. They were showing pictures of body bags. “There is absolutely no way I’m going to be doing school when people I know are going to end up facing either the Strasbourg Court or the UN Security Council. For _rescuing_ a fucking _country_.” She wiped at her eyes, but she started shaking. Lynn pushed the rest of the papers to the floor and pulled Darcy into a hug.

“You _left_ , and for good reason, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“How can I _forget,_ Mom? Some days I love it here, but other days I hate myself. Like I’m a coward for leaving. Jane doesn’t even—”

“Honey, you did the right thing, coming home. It’s the safest place.”

“Nowhere is safe, Mom. Not anymore.”

* * *

Darcy spent the next three weeks, the whole extent of her time off, pouring over legal briefs and tracking news updates. _I should really change my thesis topic_ , she told herself more than once, checking the clock only to find that it was three in the morning and _another_ country had filed an application with the ECHR.

She called Jane every day.

“I’d come, Darcy, you know I would, but—it’s the end of the semester and I can’t just _leave_.”

Darcy loved Jane, but having a best friend who’d rather hide in lab reports and wormholes than the hills of Virginia was… disheartening. So after putting down the phone, Darcy would return to the living room, where she'd lined stacks of case files against one wall. Triskelion, D.C. Manhattan. Seoul. Johannesburg. They were a mix of her own notes and published documentation and screenshots and write-ups and op-eds. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone was afraid. This wasn’t going to be as simple as a recognition that with great power comes great responsibility or some other placating bullshit.

Put fear and opinion together and what you end up with is war.


	4. All a Girl Wants Is Health Insurance and a Purpose in Life

The case files kept growing, even as Darcy returned to the office and the newscasters moved on to more recent events. You didn’t see the Avengers—you saw their absence. ISIL attacks in Syria and Tunisia and Kuwait, the Tianjin explosions… Global tragedy seemed to revert to the humane. No ancient armies descending from the sky, no omniscient cybernetic creature intent on destruction. Just the un-extraordinary grief of the every-day, no superheroes needed.

Oh, there were plenty of theories—that they were holed up in Stark Tower, hiding under the name-change. That Hulk was buried in an undisclosed supermax, that Thor was in witness protection à la Sister Mary Clarence, and the good Captain vacationing off-planet. Darcy knew better than to cast her vote for the last option—everything she knew about other worlds spoke to the relative serenity of this one. Prison, self-imposed or otherwise, didn’t suit either. Tony Stark was doing a college lecture circuit, for god's sake.

She caught glimpses of them in the field. Oh, they were careful, keeping just out of frame, nothing too daring or otherworldly. Darcy figured they’d been in Paris in November, and Brussels the following March. But even then, even in the corners, she only saw Captain America’s shield and Iron Man’s suit. No Hulk, no Thor.

Jane was still cagey and had started dating some London banker who sounded like an absolute douchebag, which meant all of Darcy’s intel was coming from late-night scrolling on r/avengerssightings and every declassified document she could find on the GII server. Her mom gave her major side-eye, but she _did_ work on her thesis, too—wrote it, revised it, defended it, and became a bona fide Master of Arts in Political Science. Art _and_ science. Take that, interdisciplinarity deniers.

Owens asked if Darcy wanted to stay on at the GII, but she was majorly burned out on academia-speak and grant writing. She asked for more hours at the law firm and got them, along with freaking _dental_ insurance and a 401(k). Turning thirty wasn’t all that bad. It was… placid. Stable. Maybe not completely safe, but definitely not dangerous.

No wonder she kept at the Avengers files. A girl needed at least a little excitement in her life.

* * *

“Jane. Who are you and why are you calling me at seven in the morning when you _know_ I’m not cognizant at this hour?” Darcy kicked off the covers. If it was a call from Jane, actually _from_ Jane, something was going on. Something most likely not good, unless it was that douchebag Damian had proposed, which would _still_ be not good.

“Darce, if you can use the word cognizant, you’re fine. Are you—are you still keeping up with them?”

“Them as in… wait. _Them_? Your ex’s besties?” She sat up. _Definitely_ not good, if Jane was talking about the one group of people she actively avoided talking about. Spring light filtered in through the blinds, and the birds were singing.

“You need to turn on the TV. Like, right now.” Jane's voice was distant, but Darcy could still hear an edge of frenzy. She grabbed for her glasses, slid into her slippers, and found her mom already on the couch, CNN turned up just a little too loud for pre-coffee-o’clock.

“Okay, okay. Mom’s got it on. What am I looking at?” A fireball flying through a building, people running through the streets—

“Nigeria. Some kind of bomb threat, but it’s worse than that. Darcy, they’re saying it’s the Avengers’ fault, Ross said—”

“Mom, can you flip to CSPAN?” She scrambled for a piece of paper and a pen, sitting on the floor next to the coffee table so she had a writing surface. “Anything specific I need to know, Jane, that I won’t find online?”

“Darce, international affairs isn’t really my thing but I know it’s yours and I don’t—”

“Jane, I am fucking _sick_ of watching everything through a screen. Tell me.”

“It sounds like sanctions. From the U.N. I mean, I know you’ve been working on it since last year, and you’ll be able to find more than me, but—”

“Sanctions.” Darcy felt her stomach drop out. “On the goddamn Avengers.”

“It was only a matter of time. You and I both know that—that this was coming. Ever since Sokovia, and before then, too.”

“Jane. _Jane_. Can you hear yourself? You really think _these_ are the people we need to be punishing?” God, she could fucking punch something. She settled for a cushion.

“It’s not punishment, Darcy. It’s just… Safety. No one wants innocent people—”

“Innocent? You mean people who can’t protect themselves from Dark Elves and Chitauri and Ultron—people who need _help_? Just because you’re in London with perfect Damian in your perfect—” Darcy felt her mom’s hand on her shoulder and took a breath. “Jane, I can’t. I can’t talk right now. I need—”

“Darcy, it’s not—”

“No, no. I need to figure this out. I can’t—I’ll call you back, okay?”

She hit _end call_ without waiting to hear a dial tone from the other end.


	5. Tony Stark Doesn't Pay Guards to Play Nice

Darcy knew that it was even worse than the media shitshow made it appear. The casualty count hadn’t been finalized, as rescue crews were still digging through debris, but at least fifteen people were dead. The Avengers had flown coop and reporters were reading vague statements that sounded an awful lot like they had come from the desk of Maria Hill but been chopped up to fit the angle of whatever outlet was presenting it. Goddamn political rhetoric.

“Tell me I can help,” she texted Erik. “Sooner rather than later.”

She didn’t text Jane, didn’t call her back either. Jane would have to wait. All of that intelligence, all of that astronomical adventure, yet Jane was still queen of the self-sabotage called “playing it safe.” Darcy couldn’t fathom it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know how someone could reach a conclusion like “maybe we should contain the uncontainable good.” There wouldn’t even _be_ a world without the fucking Avengers.

But it seemed like that very world agreed with Jane. NPR posted an interactive map that tracked which countries had submitted official statements calling on UN intervention, and Darcy kept it pulled up as she sorted file folders into boxes. By dinnertime, fifty-three countries were tagged red. More were coming.

“Mom, make sure you throw a blazer into the suitcase. And a pair of running shoes.” _Wherever I’m going, I’m going to be stressed and in need of endorphins, and not the sexy kind._ She’d called into work and taken all the PTO she could, told Judy to find a temp just in case she needed longer.

She didn’t even know where Erik _was_ , but she and her files were going to get to wherever he told her to get to and offer any and all services, because Captain America himself wouldn’t be able to sweet-talk his way out of whatever hell-storm was about come their way.

* * *

“Lewis. Darcy Lewis. Dr. Selvig is expecting me.”

Darcy flashed one of her patented _I hate you_ grins at the security guard stationed in the gatehouse as she handed over the ream of papers. Erik had given her an exhaustive list: passport, copy of passport, social security card, copy of social security card, letter of recommendation from Jane, letter of recommendation from Erik, CV, cover letter. As if this was a _job application_ and she was fresh out of undergrad.

“Ms. Lewis. Here’s a tag for your… vehicle.” The man eyed her car. “And your own ID. Please keep it visible on your person at all times. Turn right at the end of the drive, and park in lot B. You can enter at J. Someone will meet you there.”

As if her 2001 Civic was trash, and she _not_ about to be the most glaringly out-of-place civilian on site. “Great. Thanks.” Darcy grabbed the lanyard and sticker and tried not to flip off the dude in the glass box in the process. She was cranky and sleep-deprived and was probably about to lose her job and hospitality at the New Avengers Facility was apparently _shit_. But Erik had told her to come ASAP, so that’s what she’d done.

The road curved through the trees, and she took it slowly. There had been plenty of time on the highway to think about this latest impulse life decision. It had been a nine hour drive to the Finger Lakes, and she’d done it overnight while subsisting on coffee and granola bars, both of which were well-suited to existential dread and global conflict mediation. She’d almost turned around at the Maryland border, because the clock had hit one a.m. and she’d had an intense wave of homesickness. It was her first time out of Virginia in two years, and she almost had a panic attack, right there on I-81, speeding on cruise control past the overnight semis.

She wasn’t Jane. Her mind didn’t span lightyears. She was Darcy, who'd struggled through an unfunded master’s program, who could never remember how to spell _resilience_. She’d gotten used to mornings drinking coffee at the counter with her mother, listening to NPR and arguing over crossword puzzle clues.

But the files in her backseat _mattered_. She knew that, too. She didn’t know what kinds of political advisors Stark had pulled in, or what kinds of favors Nick Fury could call. But she knew how the international policy system worked, and she knew the Avengers. She knew _one_ Avenger, specifically. The rest couldn’t be all that different.

A glimpse of glass shone as she took the last bend. _Okay, so Stark doesn't spend his money on nice guys out front. He spends it on_ that. It was _beautiful—_ the woods giving way to a pristine lawn and sloping chrome. No wonder Erik had stayed up here for so long. The gleam of the complex matched the lake she could see just beyond.

And as she pulled into the guest lot, Darcy noticed the quiet. With the windows rolled down, she could hear birds in the trees, but no noise from the buildings. No hum of city life or bustle of a military base. Even the lake seemed free of ripples.

 _One ritzy hideout_ , she thought as she checked her under-eye circles in the rear-view mirror. _Darcy Lynn Lewis, you best make sure it doesn’t become someone’s prison._


End file.
